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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



WASHINGTON AND THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REVOLUTION 



ORATION 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



MUNICIPAL AUTHORITIES OF THE CITY OF BOSTON, 



AT THK CELBBRATION OP 



5ri)e declaration of ^merfcan Kntrepenticnce, 



JULY 4, 1850. 



BY EDWIN P. WHIPPLE. 



SECOND EDITION. 



BOSTON: 
TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS. 




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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by 

WILLIAM D. TICKNOR AND CO. 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Mass. 



BOSTON : 

PRINTED RY JOHN -WILSON, 

2], Prhool Ptref^t. 



CITY OF BOSTON, 



In the Board of Mayor and Aldermen, 
Monday, July 8, 1850. 

It was unanimously 

Voted, That the thanks of the City Council be pre- 
sented to Edwin P. Whipple, Esquire, for the very 
able, eloquent, and appropriate Oration delivered by 
him, before the Municipal Authorities of the City, at 
their recent celebration of the Anniversary of the De- 
claration of American Independence ; and especially, 
for his bold, discriminating, and just analysis of the 
Character of Washington. 

Voted, That he be requested to fui-nish a copy of 
the said Oration for publication. 

Sent down for concurrence. 

JOHN P. BIGELOW, Mayor. 



In Common Council, July 11, 1850. 
Head and concurred. 

FRANCIS BRINLEY, President. 
A true copy. 

Attest : S. F. M'Cleaky, City Clerk, 



ORATION 



The day, Gentlemen, we have here met to 
commemorate, in the spirit of a somewhat 
soberer joy than rings in the noisy jubilee 
of the streets, is not a day dedicated to lib- 
erty in the abstract, but a day especially 
consecrated to American liberty and Ameri- 
can independence. The true character of 
that liberty is to be sought in the events 
of our colonial history, in the manners and 
laws of our colonial forefathers, and, above 
all, in the stern, brief epitome of our whole 
colonial life contained in that memorable 
Declaration, the maxims of whooe sturdy 



6 



wisdom still sound in our ears and linger in 
our hearts, as we have heard them read 
in this hall to-day ; a Declaration peculiar 
among all others of its kind, not merely 
for the fearless free spirit which beats and 
burns beneath every decisive sentence, but 
from its combination of clearness in the 
statement of particular grievances with au- 
dacity in the announcement of general prin- 
ciples ; a Declaration, indeed, abounding in 
sentiments of liberty so sinewy and bold, 
and ideas of liberty so exact and practical, 
that it bears on every immortal feature the 
signs of representing a people, to whom 
liberty had been long familiar as a hving 
law, as an organized institution, as a homely, 
household fact. The peculiarities which 
distinguish the whole substance and tone of 
this solemn instrument are pecuharities 
of the American revolution itself, giving 
dignity to its events and import to its prin- 
ciples, as they gave success to its arms. 



Liberty, considered as an element of hu- 
man nature, would naturally, if unchecked, 
follow an ideal law of development, appear- 
ing first as a dim but potent sentiment ; 
then as an inteUigent sentiment, or idea ; then 
as an organized idea, or body of institutions, 
recognizing mutual rights and enforcing 
mutual duties. But, in its historical devel- 
opment, we find that the unselfish nature of 
liberty is strangely intermixed with its sel- 
fish perversion ; that, in struggling with out- 
ward oppression, it develops inward hatreds ; 
that the sentiment is apt to fester into a 
malignant passion, the idea to dwindle into 
a barren opinion, and this passionate opinion 
to issua in anarchy, which is despotism dis- 
organized, but as selfish, wolfish, and raven- 
ous under its thousand wills as under its 
one. These hostile elements, which make 
up the complex historical fact of liberty, — 
one positive, the other negative, — one or- 
ganizing, the other destructive, — are always 



8 

at work in human affairs with beneficent or 
baleful energy ; but, as society advances, 
the baser elements give way by degrees 
to the nobler, and liberty ever tends to real- 
ize itself in law. The most genial operation 
of its creative spirit is when it appears as a 
still, mysterious, plastic influence, silently 
and surely modifying the whole constitution 
of a despotic society, stealing noiselessly 
into manners, insinuating itself into the 
administration of laws, grafting new shoots 
upon the decaying trunks of old institutions, 
and insensibly building up in a people's 
mind a character strong enough to maintain 
rights which are also customs. If its most 
beneficent influence be seen in its gradual 
organization of liberties, of sentiments root- 
ed in facts, its most barren effect for good is 
when it scatters abstract opinions of free- 
dom, true to nothing existing in a people's 
practical life, and scorning all aUiance with 
manners or compromise with fact. This is 



a fertile source of disorder, of revolts which 
end in massacres, of Ages of Reason which 
end in Reigns of Terror ; and perhaps the 
failure of most of the European movements 
comes from their being dther mad uprisings 
against the pressure of intolerable miseries, 
or fruitless strivings to establish abstract 
principles. Such principles, however ex- 
cellent as propositions, can influence only a 
small minority of a nation, for a nation rises 
only in defence of rights which have been 
violated, not for rights which it has never 
exercised ; and abstract " liberty, equality, 
and fraternity," pushed by amiable senti- 
mentalists like Lamartine, and Satanic sen- 
timentalists like Ledru Rolhn, have found 
their fit result in the armed bureau-ocracy, 
now encamped in Paris, under the ironical 
nickname of " French Republic." 

Now, it was the peculiar felicity of our po- 
sition, that free institutions were planted here 
at the original settlement of the country, — 



10 



institutions which De Tocqueville considers 
founded on principles far in advance of 
the wisest political science of Europe at 
that day ; and accordingly our revolution 
began in the defence of rights which were 
customs, of ideas which were facts, of liber- 
ties which were laws ; and these rights, ideas, 
and liberties, embodying as they did the 
common hfe and experience of the people, 
were truly considered a palpable property, 
an inalienable inheritance of freedom, which 
the Stamp Act, and the other measures of 
colonial taxation, threatened with confisca- 
tion. Parhament, therefore, appeared in 
America as a spoiler, making war upon the 
people it assumed to govern, and it thus 
stimulated and combined the opposition of 
all classes ; for a wrong cannot but be uni- 
versally perceived when it is universally 
felt. By thus starting up in defence of the 
freedom they really possessed, the colonies 
vastly increased it. In struggling against 



11 



innovation, they '^ innovated " themselves 
into independence ; in battling against no- 
velties, they wrought out into actual form 
the startHng novelty of constitutional Ameri- 
can liberty. It was because they had exer- 
cised rights that they were such proficients 
in principles ; it was because they had known 
liberty as an institution that they understood 
it as a science. 

Thus it was not the perception of abstract 
opinions, but the inspiration of positive insti- 
tutions, which gave our forefathers the heart 
id brave, and the ability successfully to defy, 
the colossal power of England ; but it must 
be admitted that in its obnoxious colonial 
policy England had parted with her wisdom, 
and in parting with her wisdom had weak- 
ened her power ; falhng, as Burke says, 
under the operation of that immutable law 
'' Avhich decrees vexation to violence, and 
poverty to rapine." The England arrayed 
as^ainst us was not the Endand, which, a 



12 

few years before, its energies wielded by the 
lofty and impassioned genius of the elder 
Pitt, had smitten the power and humbled the 
pride of two great European monarchies, 
and spread its fleets and armies, animated 
by one vehement soul, over three quarters 
of the globe. The administrations of the 
English government, from 1760 to the close 
of our revolutionary war, were more or less 
directed by the intriguing incapacity of the 
king. George the Third is said to have pos- 
sessed many private virtues, — and very 
private for a long time he kept them from 
his subjects, — but, as a monarch, he was 
without magnanimity in his sentiments, or 
enlargement in his ideas ; prejudiced, un- 
cultivated, bigoted, and perverse; and his 
boasted morahty and piety, when exercised 
in the sphere of government, partook of the 
narrowness of his mind and the obstinacy of 
his will ; his conscience being used to trans- 
mute his hatreds into duties, and his religious 



13 



sentiment to sanctify his vindictive passions ; 
and as it was his ambition to rule an empire 
by the petty pohtics of a court, he preferred 
rather to have his folly flattered by parasites 
than his ignorance enhghtened by statesmen. 
Such a disposition in the king of a free 
country was incompatible with efficiency in 
the conduct of affairs, as it split parties into 
factions, and made established principles 
yield to mean personal expedients. Bute, 
the king's first minister, after a short admi- 
nistration unexampled for corruption and 
feebleness, gave way before a storm of 
popular contempt and hatred. To him suc- 
ceeded George Grenville, the originator of 
the Stamp Act, and the blundering promoter 
of American independence. Grenville was 
a hard, sullen, dogmatic, penurious man of 
affairs, with a complete mastery of the details 
of parliamentary business, and threading 
with ease all the labyrinths of English law, 
but hmited in his conceptions, fixed in his 

2 



14 

opinions, without any of that sagacity which 
reads results in their principles, and chiefly 
distinguished for a kind of sour honesty, not 
infrequently found in men of harsh tempers 
and technical intellects. It was soon disco- 
vered, that though imperious enough to be a 
tyrant he was not servile enough to be a tool ; 
that the same domineering temper which 
enabled him to push arbitrary measures in 
Parliament, made him put insolent questions 
in the palace ; and the king, in despair of a 
servant who could not tax America and per- 
secute Wilkes, without at the same time 
insulting his master, dismissed him for the 
Marquis of Rockingham, the leader of the 
great Whig connection, and a sturdy friend 
of the Americans both before the revolution 
and during its progress. Under him the 
Stamp Act was repealed ; but his adminis- 
tration soon proved too liberal to satisfy the 
fawning politicians who governed the under- 
standing of the king; and the experiment 



15 

was tried of a composite ministry, put toge- 
ther by Chatham, consisting of members 
selected from different factions, but without 
any principle of cohesion to unite them ; and 
the anarchy inherent in the arrangement be- 
came portentously apparent, when Chatham, 
driven by the gout into a state of nervous 
imbecility, left it to work out its mission of 
misrule, and its eccentric control was seized 
by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the 
gay, false, dissipated, veering, presumptuous, 
and unscrupulous Charles Townsend. This 
man was so brilliant and fascinating as an 
orator, that Walpole said of one of his 
speeches, that it was like hearing Garrick 
act extempore scenes from Congreve ; but 
he was without any guiding moral or politi- 
cal principles ; and, boundlessly admired by 
the House of Commons and boundlessly 
craving its admiration, he seemed to act ever 
from the impulses of vanity, and speak ever 
from the inspiration of champagne. Gren- 



16 

ville, smarting under his recent defeat, but 
still doggedly bent on having a revenue 
raised in America, missed no opportunity of 
goading this versatile political 7'oue with his 
sullen and bitter sarcasms. '' You are 
cowards," said he on one occasion, turning 
to the Treasury bench ; ^' you are afraid of 
the Americans ; you dare not tax America." 
Townsend, stung by this taunt, started pas- 
sionately up from his seat, exclaiming, 
" Fear ! cowards ! dare not tax America ! 
I do dare tax America ! " and this boyish 
bravado ushered in the celebrated bill, which 
was to cost England thirteen colonies, add 
a hundred milHons of pounds to her debt, 
and affix an ineffaceable stain on her public 
character. Townsend, by the grace of a 
putrid fever, was saved from witnessing the 
consequences of his vainglorious presump- 
tion ; and the direction of his policy even- 
tually fell into the hands of Lord North, a 
good-natured, second-rate, jobbing states- 



17 

man, equally destitute of lofty virtues and 
splendid vices, under whose administration 
the American war was commenced and con- 
summated. Of all the ministers of George 
the Third, North was the most esteemed by 
his sovereign ; for he had the tact to follow 
plans which originated in the king's unrea- 
soning brain and wilful disposition, and yet 
to veil their weak injustice in a drapery of 
arguments furnished from his own more en- 
larged mind and easier temper. Chatham 
and Camden thundered against him in the 
Lords; Burke and Fox, Cassandras of 
ominous and eloquent prophecy, raved and 
shouted statesmanship to him in the Com- 
mons, and screamed out the maxims of 
wisdom in ecstasies of invective ; but he, 
good-naturedly tolerant to political adversa- 
ries, blandly indifferent to popular execra- 
tion, and sleeping quietly through whole 
hours of philippics hot with threats of im- 
peachment, pursued his course of court- 

2* 



18 

ordained folly with the serene composure of 
an Ulysses or a Somers. The^war, as con- 
ducted by his ministry, was badly managed ; 
but he had one wise thought which happily 
failed to become a fact. The command in 
America, on the breaking out of serious dis- 
turbances, was offered to Lord Clive ; but, 
fortunately for us, Clive, at about that time, 
concluded to commit suicide, and our rustic 
soldiery were thus saved from meeting in 
the field a general, who, in vigor of will and 
fertility of resource, was unequalled by any 
European commander that had appeared 
since the death of Marlborough. It may 
here be added, that Lord North's plans of 
conciliation were the amiabilities of tyranny 
and benignities of extortion. They bring to 
mind the little French fable, wherein a 
farmer convokes the tenants of his barnyard, 
and with sweet solemnity says, — "Dear 
animals, I have assembled you here to ad- 
vise me what sauce I shall cook you with." 



19 



" But," exclaims an insurrectionary chicken, 
" we don't want to be eaten at all ! " — to 
which the urbane chairman replies, — " My 
child, you wander from the point ! " 

Such was the government whose policy 
and whose arms were directed against our 
rights and liberties during the revolutionary 
war. As soon as the struggle commenced, 
it was obvious that England could hold 
dominion over no portion of the country, 
except what her armies occupied or wasted 
for the time ; and that the issue of the con- 
test turned on the question as to which 
would give out first, the obstinacy of the 
king or the fortitude of the Americans. It 
was plain that George the Third would 
never yield except under compulsion from 
the other forces of the English constitution ; 
that, as long as a corrupt House of Com- 
mons would vote supplies, he would prose- 
cute the war, at whatever expense of blood 
and treasure to England, at whatever in- 



20 

fliction of misery upon America. Conquest 
was hopeless ; and Lord North, before the 
war was half concluded, was in favor of 
abandoning it ; but all considerations of 
policy and humanity were lost upon the 
small mind and conscientiously malignant 
temper of the king. The peculiarity of 
our struggle consisted in its being with an 
unwise ruler, who could not understand 
that war, Avaged after the objects for which 
it was declared have utterly failed, becomes 
mere rapine and murder ; and our energy 
and endurance were put to this terrible 
test, of bearing up against the king's armies, 
until the English nation, humbling its irri- 
tated pride, should be roused in our behalf, 
and break down the king's stubborn pur- 
pose. We all know, and may we never 
forget, that this resistance to tyrannical 
innovation was no fiery outbreak of popu- 
lar passion, spending itself in two or three 
battles, and then subsiding into gloomy 



21 

apathy ; but a fixed and reasonable resolve 
rooted in character, and proof against cor- 
rupt and sophistical plans of conciliation, 
against defeats and massacres, against uni- 
versal bankruptcy and commercial ruin, — a 
resolve, Avhich the sight of burning villages 
and cities turned into British camps, only 
maddened into fiercer persistence, and which 
the slow consuming fever of an eight years' 
war, with its soul-sickening calamities and vi- 
cissitudes, could not weaken into submission. 
The history, so sad and so glorious, which 
chronicles the stern struggle in which our 
rights and liberties passed through the awful 
baptism of fire and blood, is eloquent with 
the deeds of many patriots, warriors, and 
statesmen ; but these all fall into relations 
to one prominent and commanding figure, 
towering up above the whole group in un- 
approachable majesty, whose exalted cha- 
racter, warm and bright with every public 
and private virtue, and vital with the essen- 



22 



tial spirit of wisdom, has burst all sectional 
and national bounds, and made the name of 
Washington the property of all mankind. 

This illustrious man, at once the world's 
admiration and enigma, we are taught by 
a fine instinct to venerate, and by a wrong 
opinion to misjudge. The might of his 
character has taken strong hold upon the 
feelings of great masses of men ; but, in 
translating this universal sentiment into an 
intelligent form, the intellectual element of 
his wonderful nature is as much depressed 
as the moral element is exalted, and conse- 
quently we are apt to misunderstand both. 
Mediocrity has a bad trick of idealizing 
itself in eulogizing him, and drags him down 
to its own low level while assuming to 
lift him to the skies. How many times 
have we been told that he was not a man of 
genius, but a person of " excellent common 
sense," of <' admirable judgment," of " rare 
virtues " ! and, by a constant repetition of 



23 

this odious cant, we have nearly succeeded 
in divorcing comprehension from his sense, 
insight from his judgment, force from his 
virtues, and Hfe from the man. Accord- 
ingly, in the panegyric of cold spirits, 
Washington disappears in a cloud of com- 
monplaces ; in the rhodomontade of boiling 
patriots, he expires in the agonies of rant. 
Now, the sooner this bundle of mediocre 
talents and moral quahties, which its con- 
trivers have the audacity to call George 
Washington, is hissed out of existence, the 
better it will be for the cause of talent and 
the cause of morals : contempt of that is 
the beginning of wisdom. He had no ge- 
nius, it seems. O no ! genius, we must 
suppose, is the peculiar and shining attri- 
bute of some orator, whose tongue can 
spout patriotic speeches, or some versifier, 
whose muse can " Hail Columbia,*' but 
not of the man who supported states on 
his arm, and carried America in his brain. 



24 

The madcap Charles Townsend, the mo- 
tion of whose pyrotechnic mind was like 
the whiz of a hundred rockets, is a man of 
genius ; but G eorge Washington, raised up 
above the level of even eminent statesmen, 
and with a nature moving with the still and 
orderly celerity of a planet round its sun, — 
he dwindles, in comparison, into a kind of 
angelic dunce ! What is genius ? Is it 
worth any thing ? Is splendid folly the 
measure of its inspiration ? Is wisdom its 
base and summit, — that which it recedes 
from, or tends towards ? And by what 
definition do you award the name to the 
creator of an epic, and deny it to the crea- 
tor of a country ? On what principle is it 
to be lavished on him who sculptures in 
perishing marble the image of possible 
excellence, and withheld from him who 
built up in himself a transcendent charac- 
ter, indestructible as the obligations of Duty, 
and beautiful as her rewards ? 



25 

Indeed, if by the genius of action you 
mean will enlightened by intelligence, and 
intelligence energized by will, — if force 
and insight be its characteristics, and influ- 
ence its test, — and, especially, if great 
effects suppose a cause proportionably great, 
that is, a vital causative mind, — then is 
Washington most assuredly a man of ge- 
nius, and one whom no other American has 
equalled in the power of working morally 
and mentally on other minds. His genius, 
it is true, was of a peculiar kind, the genius 
of character, of thought and the objects of 
thought solidified and concentrated into 
active faculty. He belongs to that rare 
class of men, — rare as Homers and INIil- 
tons, rare as Platos and Newtons, — who 
have impressed their characters upon na- 
tions without pampering national vices. 
Such men have natures broad enough to 
include all the facts of a people's practical 
life, and deep enough to discern the spiri- 



26 

tual laws which underhe, animate, and 
govern those facts. Washington, in short, 
had that greatness of character which is 
the highest expression and last result of 
greatness of mind ; for there is no method of 
building up character except through mind. 
Indeed, character like his is not built up, 
stone upon stone, precept upon precept, 
but groivs up, through an actual contact 
of thought with things, — the assimilative 
mind transmuting the impalpable but po- 
tent spirit of public sentiment, and the life 
of visible facts, and the power of spiritual 
laws, into individual life and power, so 
that their mighty energies put on person- 
ality, as it were, and act through one cen- 
tralizing human will. This process may 
not, if you please, make the great philoso- 
pher or the great poet; but it does make 
the great man, — the man in whom thought 
and judgment seem identical with volition, 
— the man whose vital expression is not in 



27 

words, but deeds, — the man whose sublime 
ideas issue necessarily in sublime acts, not 
in sublime art. It was because Washing- 
ton's character was thus composed of the 
inmost substance and power of facts and 
principles, that men instinctively felt the 
perfect reality of his comprehensive man- 
hood. This reality enforced universal re- 
spect, married strength to repose, and threw 
into his face that commanding majesty, 
which made men of the speculative audacity 
of Jefferson, and the lucid genius of Hamil- 
ton, recognize, with unwonted meekness, 
his awful superiority. 

But, you may say, how does this account 
for Washington's virtues ? Was his disin- 
terestedness will ? Was his patriotism intel- 
ligence ? Was his morahty genius ? These 
questions I should answer with an emphatic 
yes ; for there are few falser fallacies than 
that which represents moral conduct as flow- 
ing from moral opinions detached from 



28 

moral character. "Why, there is hardly a 
tyrant, sycophant, demagogue, or liberticide 
mentioned in history, who had not enough 
moral opinions to suffice for a new Eden ; 
and Shakspeare, the sure-seeing poet, of 
human nature, delights to put the most 
edifying maxims of ethics into the mouths 
of his greatest villains, of Angelo, of Richard 
the Third, of the uncle-father of Hamlet. 
Without doubt Csesar and Napoleon could 
have discoursed more fluently than Washing- 
ton on patriotism, as there are a thousand 
French republicans, of the last hour's coin- 
age, who could prattle more eloquently than 
he on freedom. But Washington's morality 
was built up in warring with outward temp- 
tations and inward passions, and every 
grace of his conscience was a trophy of toil 
and struggle. He had no moral opinions 
which hard experience and sturdy discipline 
had not vitahzed into moral sentiments and 
organized into moral powers; and these 



29 

powers, fixed and seated in the inmost heart 
of his character, were mighty and far-sighted 
forces, which made his intelligence moral 
and his morality intelligent, and which no 
sorcery of the selfish passions could over- 
come or deceive. In the sublime metaphy- 
sics of the New Testament, his eye was 
single, and this made his whole body full of 
light. It is just here that so many other 
eminent men of action, who have been tried 
by strong temptations, have miserably failed. 
Blinded by pride, or whirled on by wrath, 
they have ceased to discern and regard the 
inexorable moral laws, obedience to which 
is the condition of ail permanent success ; 
and, in the labyrinths of fraud and unreali- 
ties in which crime entangles ambition, the 
thousand-eyed genius of wilful error is 
smitten with folly and madness. No human 
intellect, however vast its compass and deli- 
cate its tact, can safely thread those terrible 
mazes. *' Every heaven-stormer," says a 



30 

quaint German, *' finds his hell, as sure as 
every mountain its valley." Let us not 
doubt the genius of Washington because it 
was identical with wisdom, and because its 
energies worked with, and not against, the 
spiritual order its '' single eye" was gifted 
to divine. We commonly say that he acted 
in accordance with moral laws ; but we must 
recollect that moral laws are intellectual 
facts, and are known through intellectual 
processes. We commonly say that he was 
so conscientious as ever to follow the path 
of right, and obey the voice of duty. But 
what is right but an abstract term for rights ? 
What is duty but an abstract term for 
duties ? Rights and duties move not in 
parallel but converging lines ; and how, in 
the terror, discord, and madness of a civil 
war, with rights and duties in confused con- 
flict, can a man seize on the exact point 
where clashing rights harmonize, and where 
opposing duties are reconciled, and act 



•^1 

ol 

vigorously on the conception, Avithout having 
a conscience so informed with intelligence 
that his nature gravitates to the truth as by 
the very instinct and essence of reason ? 

The virtues of Washington, therefore, 
appear moral or mental according as we 
view them Avith the eye of conscience or 
reason. In him loftiness did not exclude 
breadth, but resulted from it ; justice did not 
exclude wisdom, but grew out of it; and, 
as the wisest as well as justest man in Ame- 
rica, he was preeminently distinguished 
among his contemporaries for moderation, — 
a word under which weak politicians con- 
ceal their want of courage, and knavish 
politicians their want of principle, but which 
in him was vital and comprehensive energy, 
tempering audacity with prudence, self- 
reliance with modesty, austere principles 
with merciful charities, inflexible purpose 
with serene courtesy, and issuing in that 
persistent and unconquerable fortitude, in 



82 

which he excelled all mankind. In scruti- 
nizing the events of his life to discover the 
processes by which his character grew gra- 
dually up to its amazing height, we are 
arrested at the beginning by the character of 
his mother, a woman temperate like him in 
the use of words, from her clear perception 
and vigorous grasp of things. There is a 
familiar anecdote recorded of her, which 
enables us to understand the simple sincerity 
and genuine heroism she early instilled into 
his strong and aspiring mind. At a time 
when his glory rang through Europe ; when 
excitable enthusiasts were crossing the At- 
lantic for the single purpose of seeing him ; 
when bad poets all over the world were 
sacking the dictionaries for hyperboles of 
panegyric ; when the pedants of republi- 
canism were calling him the American Cin- 
cinnatus and the American Fabius — as if 
our Washington were honored in playing 
the adjective to any Roman, however illus- 



33 



trious ! — she, in her quiet dignity, simply 
said to the voluble friends who were striv- 
ing to flatter her mother's pride into an 
expression of exulting praise, " that he had 
been a good son, and she beUeved he had 
done his duty as a man." Under the care 
of a mother, who flooded common words 
with such a wealth of meaning, the boy was 
not likely to mistake mediocrity for excel- 
lence, but would naturally domesticate in 
his heart lofty principles of conduct, and act 
from them as a matter of course, without 
expecting or obtaining praise. The conse- 
quence was, that in early life, and in his first 
occupation as surveyor, and through the 
stirring events of the French war, he built 
up character day by day in a systematic en- 
durance of hardship ; in a constant sacrifice 
of inchnations to duty ; in taming hot pas- 
sions into the service of reason ; in assidu- 
ously learning from other minds ; in wringin g 
knowledge, which could not be taught him, 



84 

from the reluctant grasp of a flinty experi- 
ence ; in completely mastering every subject 
on which he fastened his intellect, so that 
whatever he knew he knew perfectly and 
forever, transmuting it into mind, and send- 
ing it forth in acts. Intellectual and moral 
principles, which other men lazily contem- 
plate and talk about, he had learned through 
a process which gave them the toughness of 
muscle and bone. A man thus sound at the 
core and on the surface of his nature ; so 
full at once of integrity and sagacity ; speak- 
ing ever from the level of his character, and 
always ready to substantiate opinions with 
deeds; — a man without any morbid ego- 
tism, or pretension, or extravagance ; simple, 
modest, dignified, incorruptible ; never giv- 
ing advice which events did not endorse as 
wise, never lacking fortitude to bear calami- 
ties which resulted from his advice being 
overruled ; — such a man could not but 
exact that recognition of commanding genius 



35 

which inspires universal confidence. Ac- 
cordingly, when the contest between the 
colonies and the mother country was assum- 
ing its inevitable form of civil war, he was 
found to be our natural leader in virtue of 
being the ablest man among a crowd of 
able men. When he appeared among the 
eloquent orators, the ingenious thinkers, the 
vehement patriots, of the revolution, his 
modesty and temperate professions could 
not conceal his superiority : he at once, by 
the very nature of great character, was felt 
to be their leader ; towered up, indeed, over 
all their heads as naturally as the fountain, 
sparkling yonder in this July sun, which, in 
its long, dark, downward journey, forgets 
not the altitude of its parent lake, and no 
sooner finds an outlet in our lower lands 
than it mounts, by an impatient instinct, 
surely up to the level of its far-off inland 
source. 

After the first flush and fever of the revo- 



36 . 

lutionary excitement was over, and the hag- 
gard fact of civil war was visible in all its 
horrors, it soon appeared how vitally im- 
portant was such a character to the success 
of such a cause. We have already seen 
that the issue of the contest depended, not 
on the decision of this or that battle, not on 
the occupation of this or that city, but on the 
pov/er of the colonists to wear out the 
patience, exhaust the resources, and tame 
the pride of Great Britain. The king, when 
Lord North threatened, in 1778, to resign 
unless the war were discontinued, expressed 
his determination to lose his crown rather 
than acknowledge the independence of the 
rebels; he was as much opposed to that 
acknowledgment in 1783 as 1778; and it 
was only by a pressure from without, and 
when the expenditures for the war had 
reached a hundred miUion of pounds, that a 
reluctant consent was forced from that 
small, spiteful mind. Now, there was un- 



37 



doubtedly a vast majority of the American 
people unalterably lesolved on independ- 
ence ; but they were spread through thirteen 
colonies, were not without mutual jealousies, 
and were represented in a Congress whose 
delegated powers were insufficient to prose- 
cute war with vigor. The problem was, 
how to combine the strength, allay the sus- 
picions, and sustain the patriotism of the 
people, during a contest peculiarly calcu- 
lated to distract and weaken their energies. 
Washington solved this problem by the true 
geometry of indomitable personal character. 
He was the soul of the revolution, felt at its 
centre, and felt through all its parts, as an 
uniting, organizing, animating power. Com- 
prehensive as America itself, through him, 
and through him alone, could the strength 
of America act. He was security in defeat, 
cheer in despondency, light in darkness, 
hope in despair — the one man in whom all 
could have confidence — the one man whose 

4 



38 

sun-like integrity and capacity shot rays of 
light and heat through everything they shoHe 
upon. He would not stoop to thwart the 
machinations of envy ; he would not stoop 
to contradict the fictions and forgeries of 
calumny ; and he did not need to do it. 
Before the effortless might of his character, 
they stole away, and withered, and died ; 
and through no instrumentality of his did 
their abject authors become immortal as the 
maligners of Washington. 

To do justice to Washington's mihtary 
career, we must consider that he had to fuse 
the hardest individual materials into a mass 
of national force, which was to do battle, not 
only with disciplined armies, but with frost, 
famine, and disease. Missing the rapid suc- 
cession of brilliant engagements between 
forces almost equal, and the dramatic storm 
and swift consummation of events, which 
European campaigns have made famihar, 
there are those who see in him only a slow, 



39 

sure, and patient commander, without readi- 
ness of combination or energy of movement. 
But the truth is, the quick eye of his pru- 
dent audacity seized occasions to dehver 
blows with the prompt fehcity of Marl- 
borough or Wellington. He evinced no 
lack of the highest energy and skill when he 
turned back the tide of defeat at Monmouth, 
or in the combinations which preceded the 
siege of Yorktown, or in the rapid and mas- 
terly movements by which, at a period when 
he was considered utterly ruined, he stooped 
suddenly down upon Trenton, broke up all 
the enemy's posts on the Delaware, and 
snatched Philadelphia from a superior and 
victorious foe. Again, some eulogists have 
caricatured him as a passionless, imperturb- 
able, " proper " man ; but, at the battle of 
Monmouth, General Lee was privileged to 
discover, that from those firm, calm lips 
could leap words hotter and more smiting 
than the hot June sun that smote down upon 



40 

their heads. Indeed, Washington's inces- 
sant and various activity answered to the 
strange complexity of his position, as the 
heart and brain of a revolution, which de- 
manded not merely generalship, but the 
highest qualities of the statesman, the diplo- 
matist, and the patriot. As we view him in 
his long seven years' struggle with the 
perilous difficulties of his situation, his acti- 
vity constantly entangled in a mesh of con- 
flicting considerations, — with his eye fixed 
on Congress, on the States, and on the peo- 
ple, as well as on the enemy, — compelled 
to compose sectional quarrels, to inspire 
faltering patriotism, and to triumph over all 
the forces of stupidity and selfishness, — 
compelled to watch, and wait, and warn, 
and forbear, and endure, as well as to act, — 
compelled, amid vexations and calamities 
which would sting the dullest sensibilities 
into madness, to transmute the fire of the 
fiercest passion into an element of forti- 



41 

tude; — and, especially, as we view him 
coming out of that terrible and obscure 
scene of trial and temptation, without any 
bitterness in his virtue, or hatred in his 
patriotism, but full of the loftiest Avisdom 
and serenest power ; — as we view all this 
in the order of its history, that placid face 
grows gradually sublime, and in its immor- 
tal repose looks rebuke to our presumptuous 
eulogium of the genius which breathes 
through it ! 

We all know that towards the end of the 
wearying struggle, and when his matchless 
moderation and invincible fortitude were 
about to be crowned with the hallowing 
glory which Liberty piously reserves for her 
triumphant saints and martyrs, a commit- 
tee of his officers proposed to make him 
king ; and we sometimes do him the cruel 
injustice to say that his virtue overcame the 
temptation. He was not Ifliave enough, or 
fool enough, to be tempted by such criminal 
4* 



42 

baubles. What was his view of the propo- 
sal ? He who had never sought popularity, 
but whom popularity had sought, — he who 
had entered public life, not for the pleasure 
of exercising power, but for the satisfaction of 
performing duty, — he to be insulted and 
outraged by such an estimate of his services, 
and such a conception of his character ! — 
why, it could provoke in him nothing but 
an instantaneous burst of indignation and 
abhorrence ! — and, in his reply, you will 
find that these emotions strain the language 
of reproof beyond the stern courtesy of 
military decorum. 

The war ended, and our independence 
acknowledged, the time came when Ameri- 
can liberty, threatened by anarchy, was to 
be re-organized in the Constitution of the 
United States. As President of the Conven- 
tion which framed the Constitution, Washing- 
ton powerfully cdhtributed to its acceptance 
by the States. The people were uncertain 



43 



as to the equity of its compromise of oppos- 
ing interests, and adjustment of clashing 
claims. By this eloquent and learned man 
they were advised to adopt it ; by that elo- 
quent and learned man they were advised 
to reject it ; but there, at the end of the in- 
strument itself, and first among many emi- 
nent and honored names, was the bold and 
honest signature of George Washington, a 
signature which always carried with it the 
integrity and the influence of his character ; 
and that was an argument stronger even 
than any furnished by Hamilton, Madison, 
and Jay. The Constitution was accepted ; 
and Washington, whose fame, to use AU- 
ston's familiar metaphor, was ever the sha- 
dow cast by his excellence, was of course 
unanimously elected President. This is no 
place to set forth the glories of his civil 
career. It is sufficient to say that placed 
amid circumstances where ignorance, vanity, 
or rashness would have worked ruinous 

4t 



44 

mischief and disunion, he consolidated the 
government. One little record in his diary, 
just before he entered upon his office, is a 
key to the spirit of his administration. His 
journey from JMount Vernon to the seat of 
government was a triumphal procession. 
At New York the air was alive with that 
tumult of popular applause, which has poi- 
soned the integrity by intoxicating the pride 
of so many eminent generals and statesmen. 
What was the feehng of Washington ? Did 
he have a misanthrope's cynical contempt 
for the people's honest tribute of gratitude ? 
Did he have a demagogue's fierce elation 
in being the object of the people's boundless 
admiration? No. His sensations, he tells 
us, were as painful as they were pleasing. 
His lofty and tranquil mind thought of the 
possible reverse of the scene after all his 
exertions to do good. The streaming flags, 
the loud acclamations, the thunder of the 
cannon, and the shrill music piercing through 



4o 



all other sounds, — these sent his mind sadly 
forward to the solitude of his closet, where, 
with the tender and beautiful austerity of 
his character, he was perhaps to sacrifice 
the people's favor for the people's safety, and 
to employ every granted power of a consti- 
tution he so perfectly understood, in preserv- 
ing peace, in restraining faction, and in 
giving energy to all those constitutional 
restraints on popular passions, by which the 
wisdom of to-morrow^ rules the recklessness 
of to-day. 

In reviewing a life thus passed in enduring 
hardship and confronting peril, fretted by 
constant cares and wor» by incessant 
drudgery, we are at first saddened by the 
thought that such heroic virtue should have 
been purchased by the sacrifice of happi- 
ness. But we wrong Washington in bring- 
ing his enjoyments to the test of our low 
standards. He has everything for us to 
venerate — nothing for our commiseration. 



46 

He tasted of that joy which springs from a 
sense of great responsibilities willingly in- 
curred, and great duties magnanimously 
performed. To him was given the deep 
bliss of seeing the austere countenance of 
inexorable Duty melt into approving smiles, 
and to him was reahzed the poet's rapturous 
vision of her celestial compensations : — 

" Stern Lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 
The Godhead's most benignant grace, 
Nor know we anything so fair 
As is the smile upon thy face." 

It has been truly said that " men of intem- 
perate minds cannot be free ; their passions 
forge their fetters ; " but no clank of any 
chain, whether of avarice or ambition, gave 
the least harshness to the movement of 
Washington's ample mind. In him America 
has produced at least one man, whose free 
soul was fit to be Liberty's chosen home. 
As was his individual freedom, so should be 
our national freedom. We have seen all 



47 



along, that American liberty, in its sentiment 
and idea, is no opinionated, will-strong, un- 
tamable passion, bursting all bounds of 
moral restraint, and hungering after anarchy 
and license, but a creative and beneficent 
energy, organizing itself in laws, profes- 
sions, trades, arts, institutions. From its 
extreme practical character, however, it 
is liable to contract a taint which has 
long vitiated English freedom. To the 
Anglo-Saxon mind, Liberty is not apt to be 
the enthusiast's mountain nymph, Avith 
cheeks wet with morning dew and clear 
eyes that mirror the heavens, but rather is 
she an old dowager lady, fatly invested in 
commerce and manufactures, and peevishly 
fearful that enthusiasm Avill reduce her esta- 
blishment, and panics cut off her dividends. 
Now the moment property becomes timid, 
agrarianism becomes bold ; and the industry 
which liberty has created, liberty must ani- 
mate, or it will be plundered by the impu- 



48 

dent and rapacious idleness its slavish fears 
incite. Our political institutions, again, are 
but the body of which liberty is the soul ; 
their preservation depends on their being 
continually inspired by the hght and heat of 
the sentiment and idea whence they sprung ; 
and when we timorously suspend, according 
to the latest political fashion, the truest and 
dearest maxims of our freedom at the call 
of expediency or the threat of passion, — 
when we convert politics into a mere game 
of interests, unhallowed by a single great 
and unselfish principle, — we may be sure 
that our worst passions are busy " forging 
our fetters ; " that we are proposing all 
those intricate problems which red republi- 
canism so swiftly solves, and giving Manifest 
Destiny pertinent hints to shout new an- 
thems of atheism over victorious rapine. 
The liberty which our fathers planted, and 
for which they sturdily contended, and 
under which they grandly conquered, is a 



49 



rational and temperate but brave and un- 
yielding freedom, the august mother of insti- 
tutions, the hardy nurse of enterprise, the 
sworn ally of justice and order ; a Liberty 
that lifts her awful and rebuking face equally 
upon the cowards who would sell, and the 
braggarts who would pervert, her precious 
gifts of rights and obligations ; and this 
Liberty we are solemnly bound at all 
hazards to protect, at any sacrifice to pre- 
serve, and by all just means to extend, 
against the unbridled excesses of that ugly 
and brazen hag, originally scorned and de- 
tested by those who unw^isely gave her 
mfancy a home, but which now, in her enor- 
mous growth and favored deformity, reels 
with blood-shot eyes, and dishevelled tresses, 
and words of unshamed slavishness, into 
halls where Liberty should sit throned ! 



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